Letter to the editor: Teachers need our support vs. injustice

Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - 12:01 am

It’s that time of the year when public schools are making enrollment and budget projections for the 2013-2014 school year. Public schools are calculating how many students they are losing this year to private and charter schools. While hundreds of students are taking their free, unregulated state money and making a dash for the door, our best teachers are heading home worried where they will be teaching next year or if they will have a job at all.

The teachers union can’t save them from this fiasco. Schools have been told by the state that the seniority of their teachers no longer matters when making staffing decisions. Teachers will be surplused based mainly on their performance evaluations, but according to the state, only the teachers achieving the highest scores on their evaluations are eligible to step aside and find a new job. Teachers who score lower marks on their evaluations cannot be moved from their buildings.

This is an injustice on so many different levels. In no business-world workplace would senior employees who are highly valued be the first ones ousted, while those performing poorly are guaranteed their jobs.

Kids are flocking to private schools on our dime, based on some theory that the education is better. Educators in private and charter schools are generally less qualified and paid less than public school teachers.

Private schools are not even required to follow the same rules and standards that public schools are held to.

Stand with your teachers and support them, they have already sacrificed too much.